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[The following is excerpted from the book, Gather: Getting to the Heart of Going to Church, Copyright © 2021 by M. Hopson Boutot. Click here to download the entire book for free.]  

 

What is it about physically gathering with God’s people that should propel us to want to be there? My aim this chapter is to show you that when God’s people gather to hear His Word preached, God Himself is there in a special way. When we show up God shows up. We should feel rightly about gathering because when we do, we’re resting in the presence of the Father.

How God Shows Up

But how does God show up in the gathering? He does so through the faithful preaching of His Word. Now perhaps you’re thinking, “I don’t really need to show up to hear God’s Word, do I? After all, there’s dozens of preachers with podcasts and YouTube channels that are far more gifted than my preacher. I can listen to one of them anytime!” Or if you’re partial to your preacher, you can always just tune in to your church’s livestream. Both responses suffer from a severe misunderstanding of what I mean when I say showing up allows you to hear God’s Word.

During my seminary days I spent several years studying everything I could about the preaching of Martin Luther. No, not the civil rights leader with the famous “I Have A Dream” speech. That’s Martin Luther King Jr. The Martin Luther I’m talking about was the German monk whose 95 Theses against the practice of indulgences in the Catholic church helped spark the Protestant Reformation. Over 500 years ago, Luther became the most popular preacher of his day and his influence has had an enduring effect on Christianity to this day. 

Luther understood the act of preaching different from many Christians today. He firmly believed that the fundamental nature of the sermon was not mere words about God, but the words of God (1). As one scholar put it, “Luther’s greatest service to preaching is the recovery of the biblical understanding of preaching — God speaking . . . . Preaching is not mere human talk, but it is God himself speaking to individuals through human preachers.”(2)  Luther elaborated on this in a sermon on John 4: 

To be sure, I do hear the sermon; however, I am wont to ask: ‘Who is speaking?’ The pastor? By no means! You do not hear the pastor. Of course, the voice is his, but the words he employs are really spoken by my God. Therefore I must hold the Word of God in high esteem that I may become an apt pupil of the Word.(3)

Perhaps this seems a bit fishy to you. If God speaks through the sermon, isn’t our understanding of the sufficiency of Scripture at risk? If God has already said all He intended to say through Scripture, in what sense can He continue to speak through sermons today? Furthermore, does God speak through all Christian preaching? Many so-called sermons are weak at best and unbiblical at worst. One theologian clarifies Luther’s position this way:

Christian preaching — when it is faithful to the word of God in the Scriptures about our need and God’s response to it — is God speaking. When it focuses on what God has done for the world in Jesus Christ, it is God speaking. When it invites faith and presents Christ so that faith becomes possible, it is God speaking. It is God’s very own audible address to all who hear it, just as surely as if Christ himself had spoken it.(4)

Another scholar adds, “God is active in preaching insofar as the preacher remains obedient to the Word and seeks nothing but for the people to hear the Word of God.”(5) Therefore, God binds His presence in preaching to the message, not the man(6). God speaks through the sermon insofar as it corresponds with the truth of Scripture.

But what does this have to do with church attendance? To find that out, you’ll need to be patient and come back to the blog later this week.

 

1.  This view is sometimes called the sacramental view of preaching.

2.  Henry S. Wilson, “Luther on Preaching as God Speaking,” Lutheran Quarterly 19 (2005): 63. See also  J. Mark Beach, “The Real Presence of Christ in the Preaching of the Gospel: Luther and Calvin on the Nature of Preaching,” Mid-America Journal of Theology 10 (1999): 77-134.

3.  Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 22: Sermons on the Gospel of St. John Chapters 1-4 (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1957), 528. 

4.  Fred W. Meuser, Luther the Preacher (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1983), 12.

5. Wilson, “Luther on Preaching as God Speaking,” 69.

6.  Meuser, Luther the Preacher, 14.